Fonts & Printing

[Bob Thomas]

Can anyone confirm whether or not I should be able to use my regular, mac, true type and postscript fonts or not. I took my first drawings to two of the largest blueprint services in town (Atlanta), and all of the type output was replaced with another face and very much distorted with no consistency in caps and lower case.

I had exported the files in AutoCad 2004 and 14. The screen stated that the files were incomplete and none of those files would open. I exported them in HPGL and the drawings opened, but, minus the walls. I finally saved them as PDFs which, on my computer, showed everything as it should be. When the PDFs were printed the sheets and layers did OK but the type/font was still a mess.

Any information or tips anyone could share will be much appreciated. I'm new to cad and there are moments when my learning curve begins to look like the St. Louis Arch.

Thanks - Bob T
robwilltom@newvirdenartworks.com

[alexwhite]

This is in a realm of crossing over platforms between the Mac and Windows OS that will always be troublesome. I would suggest you print as though you had the larger plotter in house through the HD print preview and print routine, and then when the Mac printer dialog box comes up, print to PDF. Use the preferences and settings in the Mac PDF print to manage type faces, compression, etc. Technically, the PDF is supposed to be fool proof.... but I haave experienced the same problems even emailing a mac based pdf to a windows user.

Or another way to truly get WSIWIG printing is to print as good of quality as you can with your in-house printer, then take it to the reprographics company for enlargement and reproduction.

Last way that is available for most large repro companies is network online with its plotter and print directly... expensive though making sure you don't make mistakes over the wire. PLus you'll have to obtain mac drivers.

[steven]

I've had the best luck using a universal font in the transition from pc to mac. The font I've been using - Arial.